The potentials and pitfalls of social networking sites such as Facebook in higher education contexts
Popular social networking sites such as 'Facebook' demonstrate an emerging opportunity for students and educators within formal higher education contexts to share ideas, celebrate creativity and participate in an environment which offers immediate feedback from others who belong within a specific network. As this is an emerging use of the technology, an autoethnographic approach has helped capture the potentials and pitfalls of incorporating social networking within higher education. The findings highlight implications for the key stakeholders in higher education.
Facing off: Facebook and Higher Education
A social and cultural expectation that Information Communication Technologies (ICT) should be ubiquitous within peoples' daily lives is apparent. Connecting generational groups with a specific set of technological attributes also assumes the ways that particular groups of students should be able/do "naturally" use emergent mobile and social technologies. Moreover, the use of social networking technologies is evident in a number of ways within higher education (HE) pedagogies. As part of the suite of possibilities in Web 2.0, Facebook is used in a number of ways to support communications within and between institutions and their students as well as a mechanism for teaching and learning within specific units of study. The chapter commences with a broad discussion about social sharing software of Web 2.0, specifically Facebook, as a potential teaching and learning tool in HE contexts. We traverse recent exemplars and discourses surrounding the use of social technologies for the purposes of HE. It is clear from the literature that while there is much excitement at the possibilities that such technologies offer, there are increasing anxieties across institutional and individual practitioners, in regard to possible consequences of their use.